Surviving violence and Ortega in Nicaragua

“They killed my son. It hurts so much, it crushes me.” With a low voice Patrona del Carmen tells the story of her 22 year old son José Casco. José is one of the more than 300 killed in Nicaragua since the popular uprising began on the 18th of April.

José, everybody called him El Chino, grew up in El Viejo, a small town close to the Honduran border. At this rundown family house Patrona sits down beneath a massive picture of him adorned with plastic flowers in blue and white, the colors of Nicaragua’s flag and of the movement he died for on the 5th of June.